ENKI versus Colocation

Why should I purchase PrimaCloud if I can lease a few servers for less money?

ENKI offers PrimaCloud to provide our customers with Enterprise-grade operations services, including the high reliability and performance of our purpose-designed datacenter and VMWare, almost instant scalability, best-in-class bandwidth, and expert system administration and management services for a complete solution that provides unparalleled value.  If you just want servers, check out our virtual private servers which come without full management at a lower, fixed cost, but still offer the reliability of our cloud.  Servers provided by the average colocation company can't compete with our service on flexibility, performance and reliability, and require that you invest significant effort in supporting your own computing environment as well as purchasing reserve capacity that you don't need.  Also, you always have to lease a full server, whereas with ENKI you can lease a VPS with as little as 1% of a server's resources and resize it as you need to, only paying for what you're using, and turning it off when you don't need it.   If reliability is important to you, you will typically have to lease twice as much equipment as you need in a colocated environment to provide for backup hardware, whereas with ENKI the reliability of backup hardware is built-in.

Can you compare ENKI's PrimaCloud and Colocated Servers in Detail?

	Colocation	ENKI PrimaCloud
Reliability	A server is a single point of failure.  If a single disk (or controller for RAID systems) fails, a memory card dies, or a network interface stops working, your application is down.  In most cases, an administrator will need to rebuild the entire software stack, from operating system to end-user application, and then restore user data. Colocation providers may offer a fix guarantee, but it's only for restoring the operating system, not your application.  Failures can result in hours to days of downtime.	VMWare will restart a failed server's software on a new server within 2 minutes, typical.   ENKI offers a 10x money-back guarantee for unplanned outages exceeding our 99.95% uptime guarantee, so you know we’re up when you’re down.  With appropriate automation, your application uptime can exceed 99.9% without any human intervention.  All data is stored in a highly available SAN separate from the server, so the chances of data loss due to malfunctions are negligible and your data is available to the replacement hardware.  Additional backup services available on request.
Security	Depends on the colocation provider.  Most don't offer managed hardware firewalls.  If you want security, you will have to install a software firewall and maintain it yourself.  Limited firewall capability and connection speeds of 100Mbps or less to the internet backbone mean DDOS attacks can overwhelm your server.	Fully isolated Virtual Private Data Centers provide the same degree of anonymity and isolation as physically separate hardware.  Hardware firewalls with available active Intrusion Detection/ Intrusion protect against hacking, viruses and DOS attacks.  Defense-in-depth with optional software firewalls.  Multiple gigabit connections to the internet backbone mean DDOS attacks are absorbed by the firewalls, not your application.  Encryption is available on our SAN.  All access to servers is via key-secured SSH.  VPN access to your VPDC is available, linking your private network in the cloud to your corporate network.
Server Cost	You pay for the server purchase or lease, as well as power and rack space.  Because servers are expensive and time-consuming to upgrade, you have to buy enough server power to handle computing peaks and projected demand over the life of the server.   You're always paying for 100% of each server, even though typical usage is 5-10%   And if your peaks exceed server capacity, you can’t do anything about it, because provisioning new servers can take days.	ENKI's per-server charges are somewhat more expensive than purchasing and colocating a server.  However, ENKI only charges you for the computing resources you actually use, with all charges included in an hourly rate, usually resulting in savings over colocation.   If you only need 5% of a server, you only pay for 5%.   If you need more for a week, then you only pay for that week's extra usage.  If you need 1.1 servers, you don't pay for 2 servers.  This results in savings as you grow.   Auto-scaling allows you to use 10 servers when you need them, and only pay for your average use and a small reservation fee, resulting in large cost savings for bursty applications.  Finally, ENKI’s self-healing hardware eliminates the need to double your colocated hardware for failover.
Other Costs	Colo providers often include fixed amounts of bandwidth ,  disk storage, and IP addresses with your server.  If you exceed them, overage charges can be very high.	ENKI charges a per-unit rate for bandwidth and disk storage, with quantity discounts.  Bandwidth is charged as the maximum of incoming and outgoing usage, so one direction is free.  There are no surprise overage charges. IP addresses are $1/mo.   We want to make it easy for you to grow!
Performance	Once you buy/lease your server,  you're stuck with the performance it offers.   If you guess wrong, you have to buy another server and install it, which is time-consuming.	With ENKI's cloud, you can expand from 1/10th of a server to tens of servers, without changing your application or waiting days or weeks for an upgrade.  Our high- performance 8- and 12-core servers handle the toughest loads.  Unlike many cloud services, ENKI has designed PrimaCloud to resist resource overloads caused by other customers’ loads that can slow performance at peak times.   80 Gbit/second Infiniband interconnects between servers and to storage won’t slow down with loads from other users.   High spindle-count Sun Open Storage SANs with optional SSD caching provide enterprise-grade storage performance.
Storage	Fixed amount of storage is offered with each server as direct-attached-storage.  Storage systems vary with provider.  For good performance, server is often equipped with a RAID controller card which may offer good performance.  If the card fails, partial or complete data loss is possible.	Use as much as you need, to 5TB and beyond, while paying only for what you use, with tiered marginal quantity discounts available.   Data is stored in Sun Open Storage SANs which are highly redundant with multiple controllers, and RAID 5/51 options and offer ultra-high performance SSD-backed storage on request.
Compatibility	The reference standard.  All software will run on standalone servers.	Close to perfect.  VMWare was designed for compatibility.  The virtual servers in your VPDC function much like physical servers in a rack on their own network, but with more reliability and scalability.
Flexibility	To run an application, you have to lease/buy a server, install software on it, and test it – which can take days.  To change the application or refresh it, you have to re-image the server.  To get a good deal, you often have o sign a long commitment to live with your hardware, even if your needs change.	ENKI PrimaCloud virtual infrastructure is scalable and disposable: you can take a golden copy of your application and operating system and clone it onto new servers within minutes, and then resize them over their lifetime to match demand, and then throw them away when you don’t need them anymore.  If you’re not using them, you can turn them off and not pay for them because you are paying only for what you use every month.
Observability/ Controllability	With root access, you can control your server, but you also have to know how.  If something goes wrong, you are often the first line of defense, 24x7. Even with “managed services”, the provider won’t touch your application or platform.	ENKI offers root logins to virtual servers in your VPDC, as well as PrimaCare operations services plans that eliminate the need to log in or know anything about how to manage the server.   Many of our customers have no IT staff at all!
Observability/ Monitoring	If you want to know what's going on inside your server, you must provide your own monitoring.	ENKI offers enterprise-grade monitoring at the application and server levels, to let you know what's going on with your VPDC and your application.  We can notify you automatically if your server isn't working the way you want it to be, or with PrimaCare, we can repair the problem for you.
Deployment	You figure out how to deploy and manage your application.  You have to understand everything about your server and the software on it, as well as any management software you need to manage it.  You are also responsible for systems architecture and tuning for performance.	ENKI's experienced staff of IT professionals deploys your application in a virtual data center of your design, with full management services available through our PrimaCare operations services plans.
Vendor Lock-In	None, except that moving your software to another physical server requires configuring the new server's software environment to be identical to the old one.	WMWare's paradigm for delivering Cloud services in a VPDC means your software can usually be run unchanged in ENKI's PrimaCloud.  VMWare’s compatibility to physical hardware means that it is easy to move your virtual machines to other another provider, whether to VPDCs or to a physical data center.
Support	Colocation vendors usually only support your hardware and possibly the operating system on it.	You call the phone and we answer, with guaranteed service response times.  Our system admin experts take responsibility for your servers and software under our PrimaCare plans.
Intended Audience	Highly technically capable organizations who measure cost by price per core/RAM and focus more on price than reliability and flexibility.	Organizations requiring enterprise-grade guaranteed service levels without staffing investment,  for overall reduction in total cost of operations.   Companies wishing to take advantage of ENKI's extensive data center design and management expertise to provide high service levels to their customers.